


Broken Satellites

by adaughterofeve



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death Fix, F/M, Slow Burn, spoilers: no one dies, the martian au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 21:10:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13598454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adaughterofeve/pseuds/adaughterofeve
Summary: After losing crew-mate and friend Antoine Triplett to a storm that caused them to abort their Mars mission two weeks early, the remaining Hermes crew begin their long journey back to Earth. Bound together by grief, love, and long recovery, they begin to heal together. Months into their return journey, however, Fitz makes a startling discovery; Trip is alive and NASA has been keeping this information from them. What remains is for the crew to determine what they can do about it and choose whether to risk everything in the process.





	1. Prologue + Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> a million thanks to omgfitzsimmons for beta-ing!!!

SOL 18  
  
Gasping, retching, and sobbing, the crew of Ares 3 stumbled into the quiet of the Hermes from the wounded transport shuttle.  
  
Well, most of the crew.  
  
May and Simmons supported a blanched Morse between them, holding up their teammate with arms around their shoulders to keep her stable on her sole functioning leg. Even though no weight was weighing down her wrongly-bent knee, Bobbi Morse still strained against tears and anguished cries from the heavy pull of the atmospheric suit pressing on her leg.  
  
Johnson half-dragged Fitz into the compartment despite his racking cough and shuddering gasps. She practically dumped him onto the floor of the Hermes corridor before flinging herself at the bulkhead as it sealed behind them with a hiss.  Her fists pounded on the door, desperate and angry.

  
"Johnson!" May's voice was sharp as she quickly bowed out from Morse's arm, leaving Simmons struggling to support her single-handedly. She wrapped hands like vices around Johnson's arms, pulling her away from the bulkhead. "Johnson! Daisy! Settle down!"  
  
Daisy Johnson shrugged off the arms, wiping fiercely at the tears streaming down her face, but made no further move towards the door to the damaged shuttle. "We left him there!"  
  
"No," May said shortly. " _I_ left him there. You followed my orders."  
  
Simmons spoke up in a despairing voice, somewhat muffled by Morse's suit. "If we had stayed we would all be dead."  
  
Daisy's voice strained. "We don't even know that he's dead."  
  
"We stayed as long as we could. Maybe longer than we should've, given the damage to the MAV..." Fitz wheezed between rattling coughs, struggling out of his suit's helmet.  
  
May turned to him where he leaned against the bright corridor wall, leaving smudges of martian dirt where his hands brushed. "I told you to get your helmet on in there."  
  
He tossed the helmet on the floor in front of her, hunching over as he wrestled with his breathing. "I did. Not much help." The front panel of the helmet was cracked, shattered like ice on a pond during a thaw.  
  
Daisy continued to glare fiercely at the bulkhead door, tears pouring unrestrained down her cheeks. "We don't even know if he was dead."  
  
May winced at the past tense.  
  
"The last thing we saw was the decompression warning on his suit. No life signs, no energy reads. I went out there hoping to trip over him." May pulled off her gloves with dispassionate energy, full of grief and tension and guilt. "Simmons, how long could he survive decompression?"  
  
Softly, Jemma Simmons spoke up. "About a minute, Commander."  
  
May turned back to Daisy, feeling tears prick at her own eyes as her features softened. "He was already dead before we left."  
  
Morse hissed as she shifted her weight and Simmons readjusted her grip. In shallow breaths, Morse panted out, "The commander saved the rest of us. Impossible choice."  
  
At her sides, May's bare hands tightened into fists and she looked around at the faces staring back at her: lost, exhausted, and anguished. One fewer face than normal. Blinking rapidly, she clenched her jaw and issued orders. "Fitz and Simmons, get Morse down to the infirmary. Simmons, take a look at Fitz's lungs after you get Morse stabilized." Simmons nodded and Fitz shuffled over to her, shedding his gloves as he reached for Bobbi's other arm.  
  
May turned. "Johnson?" Daisy's eyes finally left the closed bulkhead door and nearly burned into May's in grief. May swallowed thickly. Softly she said, "I'm going to need to get a message to Coulson."  
  
  
  
  
Earlier, SOL 18  
  
“All right, team. Stay in sight of each other. Let’s make NASA proud.”  
  


From her seat, nestled in front of the computer screens of the HAB with her legs tucked underneath her, Daisy listened to the chatter of the crew as they performed their daily EVA. “Yes, Commander.”   
  


“Johnson,” Trip complained over the radio. “You’re not even out here.”   
  


Daisy grinned and clicked her headset. “You’re right. How’s Mars looking today?”   
  


“Dirty,” interjected Fitz with a grunt. “In grid section fourteen twenty-eight, the particles are predominantly coarse, but as we move to twenty-nine, the particles are much finer. It should be ideal for chem analysis, Bob.”   
  


“Hear that everyone?” Trip asked. “Fitz just discovered dirt. Alert the media.”   
  


“And what’s your job today, Trip?” Daisy asked with a short laugh, typing through to initiate the morning’s downloads from NASA. “Confirming the MAV is still upright?”   
  


“Visual inspection of equipment is imperative to mission success, girl. You know.” A brief clicking crackles across the radio as Trip adjusted his suit’s arm computer and dictated, “The MAV is still upright.”   
  


“Trip…” May’s dry voice interjected. “You keep leaving your channel open. Which leads to Fitz and Johnson responding, which leads to us listening, which leads to me being annoyed.”   
  


Daisy grinned, thumbing through the emails to be distributed to the crew. “Trip, Commander May would like you to please shut your smart mouth.”   
  


From the laboratory desk behind Daisy, Simmons spoke up, her soft voice lightly wry. In the reflection of the computer screens, Daisy could see her bent over the slides on her microscope. “Speaking for the smart people of the world, we would prefer you use a different adjective to describe Trip’s mouth.”   
  


A bark of laughter from Fitz echoed across the radio but couldn’t block out Trip’s indignation. “Did Simmons just insult me?”   
  


“Doctor Simmons.” The smirk in Jemma’s voice was palpable. “And yes.”   
  


Daisy laughed. “I’m happy to turn his radio off from here, Commander… Just say the word.”   
  


“Johnson,” Trip began, sardonically, “Constant communication is essential when--”   
  


May interrupted. “Shut him off.”   
  


With a few types and a click, Daisy shut off his radio and his monologue cut off mid-word. Behind her, Jemma’s soft laughter echoed Fitz’s across the headset. As Morse and Commander May began a soft exchange about drilling for specimens, Daisy frowned as a mission update from Houston pinged onto her screen. A quick click and a glance over the new information made her mouth suddenly dry and a heavy feeling settle in her stomach. She clicked her headset back on. “Umm.. Commander? You should come inside. You’re going to want to read this.”   
  


“What is it, Johnson?”   
  


Daisy hesitated, torn between informing them all quickly and not wanting to raise undo alarm. “We got a mission update. Storm warning.” There was a soft chink as Simmons set down her slides and padded up behind Daisy’s chair to glance at the report.   
  


“I saw the warning in the morning briefing,” May replied dismissively. “We’ll be inside long before it hits.”   
  


“Yes, but they’ve upgraded their estimate.” Was it just her imagination or could she already hear in increase in the howling winds against the canvas of the HAB? She had never felt entirely comfortable knowing that a fabric sack was what separated her from the deadly atmosphere of Mars. Unlike other members of the crew, she felt much safer on the Hermes, surrounded by mechanical pieces and metal. “The storm’s going to be worse.”   
  


“Copy that, Johnson,” May replied, her ever-serious tone not betraying any hint of emotion. “On our way back.”  
  


 

* * *

  
  


“..twelve-hundred kilometers in diameter, bearing 24.41 degrees… That’s tracking right towards us..” Simmons read as Johnson tabbed through the update. “Based on current escalation, estimate a force of…” She paused, but couldn’t hide the grim note in her voice as she continued, “Eighty-six hundred Newtons.”   
  


“What’s the abort force?” Trip asked quickly.   
  


“Seventy-five hundred,” replied Fitz in a hollow tone.   
  


“Anything above that and the MAV could tip,” Morse added.   
  


“We’re scrubbed?”   
  


Simmons read again as Johnson continued to scroll. “Begin abort procedures.”   
  


The information sank like a stone among the crew as May looked around at them all, silently measuring their responses. Fitz pinched the bridge of his nose with closed eyes and clenched teeth. Johnson’s eyes were wide and she chewed her lip nervously. Simmons’s expression was wooden and Morse’s arms were tightly crossed.   
  


Trip shifted his weight restlessly. “Maybe it won’t be as bad as they say.”   
  


Scanning over the data file again from over Johnson’s shoulder, Simmons added thoughtfully, “They are estimating it within our margin of error. We could wait it out, Commander.” 

 

All eyes in the room turned to May.   
  


Mind racing, already filing through the emergency procedures and necessary actions in the event of a storm, her eyes flickered over her crew members. She knew the value of the science they would be leaving behind unfinished. It would mean years of setbacks for NASA, reprogramming of later Ares missions to take care of the duties that Ares 3 hadn’t been able to fulfill. It would mean a PR debate over whether the expensive program was worth the millions of hours and billions of dollars dedicated to it across the globe. It would mean the bitter taste of an incomplete mission hovering in the back of her throat for the rest of her days. But it wasn’t even a question.   
  


“Commander?”   
  


May looked back at them all. Morse, always so stalwart and strong with the discipline of military training drilled into her, as it had been in May’s own life. The budding romance between Fitz and Simmons, even if the shy engineer and stubborn doctor couldn’t see it in themselves yet. Johnson, so full of fight and fear. Trip, unquestionably loyal and dependably positive. There was never a doubt in her mind that the five lives under her command were worth any cost. “Prep for emergency departure.”   
  


“Commander..” Trip protested.   
  


“We’re scrubbed, crew.”   


 

 

 

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

 

Sol 49   
  
  
  
_“…and now a question from Caroline in Maryland. Hi Caroline! Alright, she asks, ‘We were taught that time in zero gravity will make you weak. How do you stay strong when you’re spending so much time in space?’ What an excellent question, Caroline. To show you, we’re going to take a little trip down this corridor.”_ __  
  


_ The camera pans smoothly, aided by the limited gravity. A dark hand and a blue sleeve emerge from one side and grasp the polished bars to pull the cameraman down the hallway. _ __  
  


_ “You see, Caroline, not all of the Hermes is zero gravity. In total, these missions take many many months and that long up here isn’t good on the human body. So, the station rotates and, using centripetal force, it creates its own gravity! On the inner portions of the station like where we are right now, the gravity is very low which allows us to float around like this!” _ __  
  


_ A broadly-grinning figure emerges into the camera shot, rolling continuously in a somersault until bumping the wall with a dull thud. A startled caramel-haired and pale-faced engineer sticks his head out of a nearby hatch. “What the bloody hell are you doing?” _ __  
  


_ “The weekly broadcast, Fitz, so be nice.” _ __  
  


_ Fitz stutters for something to say, blushing at the sight of the camera, and finally mutters, “Don’t say hell, kids. Your parents won’t like it.” He disappears back into the adjoining corridor as the cameraman laughs. _ __  
  


_ “That, kids, was our trusty engineer, Leo Fitz. He’s a little camera-shy so you won’t see much of him.” _ __  
  


_ He reaches for the camera and pulls it along with him. “Now, as I was saying, Caroline. The inner portions of the station don’t have much gravity so we float through pretty easily. However, too much time in zero gravity can weaken your muscles and bones, making it difficult for us to perform the important tasks we have waiting for us on Mars! So, we spend much of our time here, in the outer portions of the station.” _ __  
  


_ The cameraman is sinking towards the floor (or is it the wall?) as he enters rooms where the gravity is stronger. Soon his feet are planted firmly on the ground and he laughs as he catches the camera before it topples to the floor. “As I just demonstrated, astronauts can get pretty mixed up when it comes to gravity. Switching regularly can make you a bit silly and I’ve dropped more than my fair share of lunches when I was expecting them to hover in place.” _ __  
  


_ Now holding the camera in one hand and walking backwards as if taking a perpetual selfie, the cameraman backs up into a room neatly littered with exercise equipment. Over his shoulder, a golden blonde comes into view, running steadily on a treadmill. “Bobbi here is way ahead of us in the exercise game,” he says with humor. “Introduce yourself, Bob.” _ __  
  


_ The blonde, who looks no less put together when dripping with sweat, looks over and smiles without breaking stride. “Hey everyone!” _ __  
  


_ “Bobbi is our navigator as well as-” _

  
  
A small noise from the corridor spooked Jemma and she turned to the doorway of the barrack she shared with Daisy, heart in her throat.   
  


Bobbi offered a slight smile in apology. “I always forget you still jump at noises.”   
  


“Yes, well, unlike the rest of you I’ve never been able to ignore the well-choreographed dance we do with death in the vacuum of space,” Jemma replied sourly.    
  


“On Mars there was only the thin material of the Hab and you handled it fine.”   
  


“That’s different.”   
  


Bobbi made a face as though to disagree and then thought better of it. The beat of silence stretched as the two looked back at the rolling video, now showing an exchange of banter between Bobbi and Trip in the Hermes gymnasium.    
  


“Today’s his birthday,” Jemma finally murmured, watching the captured moments flicker by.    
  


“I know,” Bobbi responded softly. “May was composing a message to his grandparents when I stopped by the bridge earlier with reactor data.”   
  


Jemma cleared her throat and blinked away the sharp moisture in her eyes. She turned back to her crewmate with a bright, if brittle, smile. “What did you need?”   
  


Bobbi crossed her arms as she leaned against the door jam, a sad smile across her face. “A favor, actually.”   
  


Jemma raised an eyebrow curiously and paused the video, turning from the screen to fully face Bobbi. “You certainly have my attention.”   
  


“Would you check in on Fitz? No- nothing’s wrong-” Bobbi added quickly at the look on Jemma’s face. “I’m just.. Concerned. He’s being hard on himself about his rehabilitation. I’ve tried to reach out to him since I’m in the same boat,” she said, gesturing at her leg, “but he’s resisting me. He seems distracted. I know you two are close-”   
  


“We’re friends,” Jemma said quickly, internally wincing at her clipped tone. 

Bobbi smiled. “And that being said I was hoping you’d check in on him. He’s in the lab.”    
  


* * *

Fitz glanced up at the slight change in pressure as the lab door opened from the internal corridor. He quickly keyed out of the satellite imagery open at his computer and tried to look casual, brushing his hands roughly through his short-shorn hair, rueing the day he had allowed Daisy to cut it. 

Jemma hesitated just outside the door and Fitz leaned around the lab bench to see her. “Jemma, you need something?”   
  


She took a couple careful, if awkward, steps through the door, twisting her hands together in thought.    
  


“Bob sent you to check on me, didn’t she?”    
  


“No,” Jemma lied, badly. Her cheeks flamed as she took another few steps into the lab and leaned against her own workspace.    
  


“Right,” he replied, unconvinced.    
  


Jemma’s eyes narrowed as she looked between his computer’s blank screen and his hand, which he now realized was hovering protectively over the mouse as if she might seize it and open up his investigation. Sure enough, she asked, “What are you working on?”   
  


Fitz pulled his hand away from the mouse with effort and waved it around, aiming for nonchalance and ending up somewhere around flamboyance. He crossed his arms before they could betray him again. “Nothing specifically,” he lied (though, in his opinion, much more smoothly than Jemma). “Just reviewing some data.”

He cut off his explanation; Jemma was drawing nearer, entering his space and far over the invisible line of demarcation that he always drew between her biological tests and his engineering mishaps. Her hand brushed against his arm in the small shared space as she leaned over him and he jolted back slightly as if he’d been shocked. 

Fortunately, she didn’t seem to notice. She filled his space with the clean, washed scent he’d grown used to (fond of) while on the Hermes; it had the faintest traces of cinnamon, as if she’d just finished a cup of her favorite tea. He felt vaguely dazed, much like he often did when his injury overwhelmed him and his vision and thoughts would swim for a minute. 

Jemma reached past him for the mouse; he belatedly tried to pull it out of reach but his movements felt sluggish and his hand unresponsive. She  clicked open the satellite telemetry and her face immediately darkened. He watched her eyes roam the familiar landmarks of Acadalia Planitia. 

“Why are you looking at this?” She finally asked, thickly. She blinked rapidly. “What are you expecting? His body won’t decompose.”   
  


Finally feeling his senses refocus, he quietly murmured, “I don’t think there is a body.”   
  


Jemma dropped the mouse like she’d been burned and stood up quickly. “What?”   
  


Fitz leaned in and seriously voiced his suspicion. “Jemma, I think Trip is still alive.” 


	2. Chapter 2

“Show me again,” Jemma insisted for the third time in an hour, pacing restlessly through the lab space.   
  


“Jemma…” Fitz coaxed, reaching out as if to place a comforting hand against her arm and then pulling it away before he reached her. He was silenced by the look she gave him.    
  


“Show me again.”   
  


Fitz sighed and sat up again, leaning forward in his lab chair and running a hand through his short hair. Jemma almost regretted letting Daisy near him with a pair of scissors, but she liked it that length. She tore her gaze away from him and back to the imagery Fitz was leafing through on his screen. He pushed it over to her with a grim expression and leaned back in the chair again, biting the end of his stylus as he watched her. She felt, more than saw, his soft but intense gaze on her face and she frowned, trying to focus on the matter at hand and not the flush creeping up her neck.    
  


“Sol 18,” she repeated back to him. “Before the storm.” The HAB was no more than a white circle the size of a quarter, blurry and pixelated against a bright burnt-orange landscape. The rovers were both parked and charging, their oblong shapes nearly touching as they sat parallel to each other. The solar panels were a parking lot of dark grey and refracting sunlight. She glanced at the timestamp. It would have been taken while they were eating breakfast and preparing for the day’s EVA. She imagined she could see through the white dot of the HAB to the busy interior where Daisy and Jemma were finishing a cup of coffee or tea and Trip was wolfing down his morning waffles. She brushed her fingers across the picture’s screen and remembered May’s subdued humor as she passed out the day’s assignments to the crew members performing the day’s EVAs.    
  


Fitz reached over and flipped to the next picture. “Sol 42.”   
  


Jemma’s eyes were immediately drawn to the differences, like those trivial puzzles in children’s magazines. The rovers were now sitting perpendicular to each other, ends butting up against each other as they sat in their charging stations. The blurry white blob of the HAB was still there, still intact. It almost seemed as if they had never left. “Maybe May took out one of the rovers in the morning and put it back after the photo was taken.” It was a weak argument.   
  


“Maybe,” Fitz admitted, “But I double checked our daily report and there is no mention of the rovers being used at all since Sol 17.”    
  


“She could have forgotten to report the move.”    
  


Fitz leveled an even look at her and she relented, “Alright. So that’s less than likely.” She frowned and chewed her lip. “Couldn’t the wind could have pushed it?”    
  


Fitz made a vague gesture and pointed at the solar panels. “Then who cleaned off the solar panels?”   
  


Jemma sighed frustratedly, tense and taught from the discussion. “Oh Fitz, the wind from the storm could have done that too!”   
  


“Then they wouldn’t still be clear. Think, Jemma! We had to go out there every bloody day to blow those things clean.”    
  


Jemma fell quiet. Even if the wind had blown some of them clear, the panels were all set up to face in slightly different directions in order to capture the greatest amount of sunlight as their powersource travelled across the Martian sky. It was extremely unlikely that the wind had blown such that all of the different panels at their different angles were cleaned off at the same time. She stared at the image for a long quiet minute. “How did you get these?”   
  


“NASA frequently uses the Hermes as a stepping stone to the satellites in Mars’ orbit while we’re closer to Mars than Earth. I can’t order satellite time but I can certainly piggy-back on whatever they decide to run.”   
  


“And they didn’t look at the Acadalia Planitia again until Sol 42… Why?” She mused aloud. She closed her eyes and rested her forehead into her palms with the obvious realization. “Because NASA is public domain… required to publish all photos to the public within 24 hours of them being taken. They were worried about a PR nightmare if they happened to stumble on a picture of Trip’s body.”  She looked over to Fitz who was watching her intently.    
  


“So you agree?”   
  


Jemma sighed again and ran a hand through her hair in agitation. “I don’t know what to believe. If this is true and Trip is alive,” she smiled and laughed in a brief relief, “then obviously I would be floored. But all of us saw the bio readings. His life signs were non-existent, his suit decompressed. He registered as deceased. How could he possibly have survived?” She began pacing again, setting a familiar pattern in the lab floor. Fitz leaned out of the way and watched as she processed. “If something had happened to his bio-reader, possibly that could explain the lack of life signs but that wouldn’t explain the decompression reading. Those are two separate components of our EVA suits.” She frowned, puzzling over the picture again. “What is this?” she asked, indicating an unfamiliar scrap of black and silver in the second image.    
  


Fitz rose from the chair and leaned over the lab bench next to her. “That, I imagine, is the top of our communications relay.” He pointed at the side of the HAB where Jemma could almost imagine there might have once been a skinny tower pointed skyward. “That would explain what it was that crashed into Trip and why he wouldn’t have just immediately messaged NASA and Hermes that he was alive and we had left-” he stopped and cleared his throat, glancing at his clenched hands. “Left him behind.”   
  


There was a beat of painful silence. Jemma thought of Trip’s easy grin and banter and it twisted like a knife in her side. “What can we do?”   
  


Fitz stirred from his own revery and turned back to her. “If I’m right? Nothing.”   
  


“Nothing?!” Jemma exclaimed.    
  


“For now, anyway.” Fitz ran his hands through his hair again and took a deep breath. “These images are from Sol 42, yes? That was a week ago. Why hasn’t NASA told us?”   
  


“Do you think they haven’t caught it?”   
  


Fitz shook his head and scratched at the rough stubble coming in across his jaw. “No, they haven’t missed it. They’ve been redirecting a bunch of the satellites from the other Ares locations to track Ares 3. It’s been a right pain to try to get into their imagery -- I’m far less familiar with the satellite system as a whole and they’ve been doing their best to reroute the signal to not come via the Hermes.”   
  


“They don’t want us to know.” The moment Jemma said it, she was certain. She felt a chill fall over her and she wrapped her arms around herself. “God, why wouldn’t they want us to know? And why didn’t you ask Daisy for help?”   
  


Fitz stared up at her and asked, frankly, “Would you, if you weren’t a hundred percent certain?”    
  


After a moment she shook her head. There was a long beat of silence as she stared at the image, trying to imagine Trip alone and working ceaselessly to continue surviving. “Fitz, he’s going to starve to death hundreds of days before anyone can get help to him…”   
  


He hung his head, staring down at the fuzzy white dot of the HAB on the satellite imagery. “I figured as much. But until he figures out some way to communicate with us or with NASA, there isn’t anything we can do to help him.” His voice sounded choked, as if he were back in those terrible hours immediately after aborting the mission and returning to the Hermes. His voice had been raspy and strained for days after; she knew he still wrestled daily with the bouts of vertigo and dizziness that had come from the oxygen deprivation. 

 

She reached out and breached the distance between them, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder. He stiffened at first, fingers tightening against the edge of the lab bench, but gradually relaxed into the touch as she drew small circles with her thumb across the fabric of his shirt. 

  
“We’ll figure this out,” she said softly. “Together. With or without NASA’s help.”   
  


 

* * *

 

Hours later, Fitz had finally fallen into some sort of fitful sleep when there was a knocking at his barrack door. He threw off his covers and grouchily pulled on a NASA-issued jumper, ignoring his shoes and padding across the cold metal floor to the door. He squinted out into the bright light of the corridor, only somewhat blocked by Jemma, standing with her arms crossed tightly around her, bouncing on the balls of her bare feet.    
  


“Jemma? What’s --”   
  


She interrupted him sharply. “I know how he could have survived.”   
  


Fitz pulled the door open, glancing around at the empty corridor. “I thought we agreed that it would be best for us to keep it to ourselves until we’re certain.”   
  


“Yes, I know. I’m sorry. But Daisy’s asleep and Bobbi’s in the comm. Just let me in!”   
  


Somewhat awkwardly, Fitz sidestepped so that Jemma could join him in the room. He shut the door behind her and keyed the lights on, though not as bright as they were outside. As they slowly rose like a hastened morning sunrise, Fitz saw Jemma’s face turned towards the empty bunk, now used for storage. He called her name quietly and she whipped around to look back at him. Eyes adjusting to the light, he could see now that her face was lined and her eyes dark, as if she had gotten even less sleep than he.    
  


“I know how Trip could have survived,” she repeated fervently. “I mean, it’s just a theory. But the science checks out.”   
  


His bleary thoughts sharpened into focus. “I’m listening.”   
  


She glanced around his room until spotting his stylus which she snatched from his bedside. “Imagine this is the primary communications antenna.” She reached forward and imitated stabbing him in the side with it. He yelped and jolted away from the poke in his side. “And you get run through with it.”    
  


“Very lifelike representation, yeah.”    
  


A smile briefly flickered across her face before she focused again. “Now the suits been punctured so it’s decompressing and the alarms are going off. The rest of us receive the decompression alert and you are unconscious through a combination of trauma and decompression so you don’t respond to our messages. Realistically you’re dead within a minute, however…” She wrapped her hands around the stylus against his jumper. “Hopefully you’re suffering from some pretty substantial blood loss-”   
  


“That is definitely the only time ‘hopefully’ applies there…” Fitz muttered, interrupting her.    
  


“Yes, hopefully, because then when the blood that is escaping from the wound and the puncture of the suit hits the atmosphere, it almost instantly freezes and hardens, forming a rudimentary plug for the leak.”    
  


Fitz frowned, staring down at Jemma’s hands on his jumper, now splayed as if forming a web across his abdomen from the end of the stylus. He coughed, self-consciously, and Jemma dropped her hands and stepped back, blushing. “It’s an interesting theory,” he eventually replied. “But that’s a very specific set of circumstances to have happened.”   
  


Jemma shrugged. “The chances of it don’t matter much anymore, now that it’s happened. Trip’s alive. I’m just reconciling myself to the fact that there is a scientific possibility of how it happened.” She turned and began pacing the small floorspace of his barrack. “He’s alive for now… but Fitz… If the oxygenator breaks, he’ll suffocate. If the water reclaimer breaks, he’ll die of thirst. If the Hab, which mind you is only supposed to last thirty one sols breaches he’ll just sort of ….implode.” She paled at the thought. “And if by some miracle our luck turns and none of that happens, eventually he’s just going to run out food…”   
  


Fitz took her shoulders, catching her mid-stride. The gesture seemed to surprise her as much as it surprised himself. He resisted the urge to brush her hair out of her face and instead focused on the intense emotion in her eyes. “And until any of those things happen we have potentially months to fix this, alongside some of the most brilliant minds in scientific history.” 

 

Jemma looked briefly skeptical at the last bit and Fitz had to bite back an affectionate smile at her pride. He risked a brief squeeze of her shoulders and a soft smile. “We’re just going to have to science the shit out of this.”   
  


Despite herself, Jemma laughed softly and the sound bounced around his chest like echoes in a cave. He watched the battle of emotions flicker across her perfect face; it finally settled somewhere around determined resignation. He dropped his hands from her shoulders before the gesture became too intimate.    
  


Jemma inhaled deeply and nodded. “Alright.”   


**Author's Note:**

> Sorry that this is a million years late. Whoops.


End file.
